The writing style isn't for me, and it feels like a long-winded wind up to a shock reveal I'm not interested enough to find out about.

Yes, girl! Reference everything and give us NOTHING.

Katabasis is a glaring example of how boring and pretentious the 'academia' genre is. This is meant to be a character driven story, but even from the start, these characters are just bland vehicles used to regurgitate philosophical quotes and leap you from one plot point to the next so you are spoon-fed rehashed commentary on books like Dante's Inferno, tbh mainly Dante's Inferno.

It is incredibly long and droning for what it offers. The beginning had me close to DNF'ing, with its lack of stakes or anything offering a semblance of interesting topic, but the middle started to, admittedly, gain a bit of traction in said interesting topic issue, but by the last 1/3 it was right back to being an absolute chore to finish. By the end, it really just felt like a long-winded complaint of the academic world, which is valid, but has no business being so long to get such a point across.

At the end of the day, this book suffers greatly trying to be 'intelligent', but all it does is show how little creative freedom the author allowed in order to simply walk a reader through a retelling of Dante's Inferno, with many plot points feeling like a checklist of scenes vs. something cohesive and entertaining.

DNF'ed. I dislike romance books where adult women act/talk like children/teens. It makes for a juvenile read, and coupling it with adult commentary/ideas is just not it for me.

DNF'ed after chapter 3. The writing is atrocious, the structure of it as well. I cannot be bothered to finish this 500+ page book if this is how it is going to continue, let alone move on to the upcoming sequel.

I think this author in particular is simply not for me. I DNF'ed after 13 chapters, and the only nice thing I can say about this book is Bartholomew was a fun little character. Otherwise, I don't think this author, writing specifically, is for me.

DNF'ed on chapter two... This authors writing is just not for me.

I really did give it a try, but this is just not a book for me.

I think this had an incredible start, but for such a short book it lost steam quickly. Especially moving away from the horror aspects of the book and more into a literary fiction style. It makes for the book to seem to be more trying to shock you than 'say' something when it does what it does with the 'horror' aspect only to let it fall away. Still an intriguing story, but I was certainly left wanting.